This painting is typical of Maes’s small scale work of the mid-1650s. He posed this family group in an exterior setting, seated on a brick veranda with a vine climbing up the wall behind them. Although the child wears skirts, he is in fact a boy. Boys were only ‘breeched’ at age five or six. He holds a hobby horse, a typical toy from the time. The dramatic lighting and colouring of the scene are indicative of Maes’s former training with Rembrandt. A false Rembrandt signature was removed from the picture when it was cleaned in 1952.